Barbour says Sandy 'broke Romney's momentum'

11/4/12 9:57 AM EST

Haley Barbour is the latest Republican to suggest that Hurricane Sandy has dealt a serious blow to Mitt Romney’s quest for the White House.

“The hurricane is what broke Romney’s momentum,” the former Republican Mississippi governor said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”b“I don’t think there’s any question about it. Any day that the news media is not talking about jobs and the economy; taxes and spending; deficit and debt; Obamacare and energy; is a good day for Barack Obama.”

Barbour, who told POLITICO last week that Sandy took attention away from important domestic issues and was therefore the “Obama campaign’s dream” -- on Sunday once again referred to the superstorm that devastated large swathes of the country’s East Coast as a force that caused a media “blackout.”

“If this election had been held last Friday, the last Friday in October, Romney would have won,” Barbour said. “Nothing was stopping Romney momentum. No matter what Obama did, he couldn’t stop the momentum. This blackout – I’m not blaming the news media -- all the news coverage was about everything but Obama’s policies.”

Republican strategist Karl Rove has said that Sandy helped Obama by taking away from the force of Romney’s message on the economy. Like Barbour, Rove didn’t go as far as to say the race was over. But both men’s messages were similar: Sandy was not a helpful October surprise for the Republican presidential nominee.